Looking for the other one
by J.A.Kishu
Summary: Giving life can be as painful as taking it. John has it easier in hiding it but that doesn't prevent him from getting hurt and making mistakes on his journey to find the one person that belongs to him. Part 3 of Death is their gift
1. Lost and found again

**Looking for the other one**

_(Part 3 of Death is their gift)_

**Chapter 1: Lost and found again**

John Watson grew up in a loving household. You could say that this fact is nothing special. Every family should love each other and their home should be filled with as much love as possible. However you have to admit that living in a world where people can control minds and move mountains every bit of normality is something extraordinary that has the right to be mentioned. Also there is the fact that without this extraordinary world, the family of John Watson lives in, they wouldn´t be this loving, happy picture of the perfect family. There is this simple thing of a sick mother that would have died of her sickness. After a long and hart fight with her body all would be lost and a father would be left behind with his two children. Both too young to remember their mother, the love she was feeling for them, the songs she used to sing to them when her condition let her but as it is already established this is an extraordinary word where a baby is born and heals his dying mother with the first touch than he is Life.

No one except his mother understood the gift her little baby boy brought with his birth to this world and she wouldn't tell then the moment she understood she also learns of the consequence and bares them alone. Her son's gift did nothing to living things, it is as if he never was born with one, only dead things experience the effect and she was one of these dead things. Unnoticed by the doctors the mother had died between giving birth and the first touch of her child. Afraid of the government and the research facilities children are brought when they are born with gift that are extraordinary or dangerous she and her husband hide the fact that their son was special. They left the city behind and moved to the country side.

The father found a new job in a small factory and the mother could continue her job as a nurse. A hospital had been looking for new staff and they were happy to employee someone that had worked before in one of the busiest hospitals of the city. Their live continues, John Watson´s big sister starts school and John follows a year after. It was one afternoon as the five year old boy was sitting on the kitchen table coloring a picture of a bumble bee in his coloring book that his mother came home with tears in her eyes. The first thing she did was picking her baby boy up and hugging him as if it was the end of the world.

The little boy didn't understand what had happened but he hugged her back and told her everything will be alright. Like she would do when he had fallen and hurt himself. Alarmed by the sound of his crying wife, John´s father enters the kitchen. He has a night sift later but was usually able to spend the afternoon and an early dinner with his family.

Sill with John in her arm, she looked at her husband. "They took him." Confused what she means the father wants to question her but she continues without further encouragement. "The baby that was born today. He has a death bringing gift. His mother died the second she touched him. I had him in my hands but only on a towel but she died. Doctor Thomes alarmed the facility and they took him away. Not even his father was allowed to see his son." Newly born tears spill out and she hides her face at the chest of her husband. He knew the trouble she was feeling. They had saved their son from the face of being brought into the facility but the boy that was born today hadn't been so lucky. Aware of their luck they both pull John closer to them feeling their son alive and happy with his family.

* * *

What John didn't notice during his childhood was his mother´s eyes. Later, after he had finally understood what his gift does, he could see what their meaning was but not as a child. As he thought his life was happy and the best in the whole wide world. Where nothing bad can happen because he has his parents and his sister all living together and even if something happened they could fix it.


	2. The friend that came back

**Chapter 2: The friend that came back**

Growing up on the country side, John was a stranger to the big city. London was busy, loud and filled with a strange wipe, like a swarm of bees. People were running from one point to the other, exit and entering caps, subways, busses or their own cars. Everything seems to be faster than necessary in John´s eyes. The shopping, taking books from the library or moving in with boxes filled with clothes and books.

John Watson is 18 years old and will live alone for the first time in his life. The room in his dorm is small, but cozy, with two beds, two desks, two wardrobes and a door to a tiny bathroom. A sudden thought was born in his mind, he isn't living alone, no he got to have a roommate. Nothing with his own space without parents or his sister entering his private space whenever they want to, not that he minded his family but still. His worries were released a few seconds later as a young man appears behind him, someone who will become one of John´s best friends.

"You must be my new roommate, nice to meet you, Richard Crow." John shakes the offered hand.

"John Watson, new in London." John grins; his roommate was exactly what he needed. Not that John could suddenly read minds, no he just felt right the moment they touched and without further interruption his life as a medical student begun. With everything, studying until late in to the night, drunken parties only able to walk because Richard was there to support him (and John him), a broken heart from his (now ex-)girlfriend and of course many hours spend with his roommate who John would call one of his best and close friend he will ever have.

* * *

But all this change at a rare cold winter day that surprises John and Richard on the road with a sudden ice-rain that let the road freeze and the wheels of the rental car they took out for a weekend on the country side for some relaxing slip. They crushed into the roadside, broke through the boundary and come to a stop as the car meets a tree.

As John regained conscious and notices first the sudden pain fast traveling from his leg through his body. A small moan escapes his lips but he bravely opens his eyes to face reality. The realization that he could die in this car forces him to deal with reality. Namely open his eyes. The cold water from the rain was held back by the front window, despite it´s broken state. Carefully John makes a check on his own body, it doesn't seem like he has many injuries. His head hurts and touching his forehead he finds his fingers red afterward. His chest hurt, most likely from the seat belt and his right leg seems to be broken. It doesn't look to good at least, glad for the shock he is feeling only partial of the pain he should be in.

After deciding that he didn't have a neck injury he starts to turn his head to the side to check over his friend. His whole check up on himself had maybe taken 30 seconds. Another 30 seconds John spend by starring at his friend beside him. His brain couldn't understand what it was seeing. Richard didn't move, not as John called his name, not as he shakes his shoulder. Looking closer John finds a piece of metal piercing into the right side of his friend and a impressing size of blood puddle was covering everting on his side of the car. The floor, the car door, all of Richard clothes, even the window and his face are covered in it. John doesn't need to be a medicine student to see that his friend had died due to blood loss only seconds after the crash.

John wants to scream Richards name, he wants cry and beg but nothing would bring his friend back. As suddenly his mother's warning words appear in his mind. _"Never touch something that had died."_ He had ask her what she meant and she told him about his powers but that they have a price to pay. He isn't sure how his powers work but touching must be the key. Deciding in the split of a second John pulls out the piece of metal of his friend's body and touches the already cooling skin with his bare hand.

The effect is imminently. Richard´s eye shot open and his friend looks confused around the car. John can see how the wound is already closed and an ugly big scar is covering the place that had been open before. Richard looks at him with huge eyes. "Did I just die?" He asks.

"Yes but I brought you back. Please don't tell anyone." John offers a smile. They could hear the ambulance in the distance. John knows the risk of being one of the gifted and hide it. His mother said he is powerful and the ones with power get taken away. His family never wanted that, they hid it from the world and so did John until now. They would need an explanation for the blood but both of them had head wounds, they blead a lot. To make sure that they wouldn't be questioned John destroys the front window completely to let the rain in an wash a bit of the blood away, not the best way to cover it up but it´s all he can find right now.

The ambulance arrives and after a quick check up they are brought into the closest hospital, John´s leg is broken and they both have concussions. Due to Richards confused statues they think his is worse as it really is but in the end no one questions their living status or the blood in the car.

* * *

A few months later, after his leg is healed and John can return to his normal life he enters his room and finds blood on the bathroom floor. Slowly John opens the door and finds Richard, both of his arms cut wide open, the blood has already stopped, John knows he is dead. He finds the letter an the closed toilet seat.

_Dear John_

_I don't feel like belonging in this world, I have no place in it anymore. Thanks for trying but with every day I feel like losing myself. I was dead and I will be dead again. _

_Richard_

It hurt to read it, it hurt to see his friend like this but thinking back he can see what Richard means. Over the last weeks his friend had changed, he got quieter, spaced out a lot and looked so sad sometimes.

John calls his friends death in, he doesn't try to touch him again, doesn't try to bring him back. It doesn't seem to be the blessing he had thought to. After the body had been taken care off, the questions of the police answered John packs a back and takes the next train home. He needs a break, he needs his mum to tell him it wasn't his fault.

His mother opens the door to the small house he grew up in. He had visit the last time at Christmas but it seems to be ages ago. John told her about the Richard, this time the whole story about the accident, about the letter he found next to the cooling body and his fears that his ability is a curse.

Sadly his mother doesn't give him the answer he expects, instead she tells him about his birth, that she is like Richard. Brought back to life by his touch. He knew that had had always counted that as prove that his powers are good. "John, I do know how your friend felt. I do so myself but I try to hold on to something. Every day I need something to hold onto or I would rather chose death then life another second in a world where I don't belong in anymore. My time was up, I live on borrowed time and one day I might chose to not find a reason to live that day. Your father knows that and he chooses to life everyday like it´s our last. We both do and none of us blames you for it. You don't have to feel guilty about it, we are thankful for the time you gave us but still there are people that can´t find it inside of them to live." She cups his face with her hand and kisses his forehead.

* * *

John had stayed a week at home. He thought about his power to bring life, a dangerous gift, one he decided not to use unwisely again. Feeling like he aged decades in only a few weeks John return back at the university. He continues his studies, does his internship in the Emergency Room but chooses the military way in the end. He thinks that he can do more good in a war zone. On his last day in the ER on his way out he watches the arrival of another drug addict with symptoms of an overdose. They had a few today. The police did a sweep out of all their usual places, some raid gone wrong the days before. This patient arrives with an army of people in protective suits. There only one reason for that, someone with a potential deadly power. John couldn't get a good look at the patient but he looks young.

"Poor kid …" Knowing he easily could have ended up like him too.


	3. Everything has a price

**Chapter 3: Everything has a price**

John had learned the hard way what it means to bear a gift that powerful. He is powerful and it costs the people that come in contact with it everything. His gift doesn't matter as long as he doesn't touch something dead but who can always remember not to touch a dead plant, even by accident. Some of the beings John brought back didn't even look dead. Like the flowers in his aunts kitchen, as he was 10 or the time he touched the dead mouse that was about to be fed to a pet snake. Incidents like this had needed series explaining by his parents, not to John, he understood deep inside that it had been him who brought these things life but for the others. Like the mouse had been in shock or the flowers got some fertilizer.

It didn't really matter, in fact John wasn't thinking about his gift very often, as said without touching dead things it was as if he was one of the many people that never were born with one gift. Still his parents did everything to teach him how to avoid certain situation that could lead to his gift being discovered. In one of his many restless hours as an assistance doctor in one of London´s clinics a thought appeared in John´s mind. He has to say that this thought had a bit of help developing. One of his patients on this day came in with his girlfriend, both gifted as they had to tell per law. Both have power over certain elements, he over ice, she over fire. They told him that they hadn't been able to really control their gifts and even hurt others by touching before meeting each other. Without fear to hurt the other, the gifted could not only learn absolute control but also feel safe enough to let their guard down around each other.

John who had kept his distance as much as possible to other people in the matter of love, out of fear to repeat what happened to his friend was a young single man who should be looking for someone. But it had never occurs to him that there could even be someone matching to him and his gift. Someone belonging only to him, someone who he could belong to. A place where both of them could feel safe and have a home. So where is John´s other half, really it should have been that hard to think about it. There has to be someone out their matching him but the sudden happy feeling that grew by the thought of someone to share his life with was stopped as the meaning of this stuck him hard. The opposite of his gift was DEATH. He is looking for someone who could bring death and a gift like that would have been found out early. John´s other half is also most likely a resident of the cities gifted facilities. Without knowing where to start he would never be able to even enter these centers.

Defeated and crushed as the new born hope died John returns to his shift, smiling an empty smile at the happy couple who got released an hour later. Maybe John was cursed to spend the rest of his life alone but honestly who would want someone like him, who courses suffering and false hope.


End file.
